The below comments from Stefan Borgas, CEO of ICL indicating that they doe not agree with the current CAPEX estimate and that more work needs to be done before ICL can sign off on the project is not good news but at least brings some rational and logical reasons for the decline in the SP. The market has probably known this for quite some time hence to drop in SP from 0.53 to 0.30 since the ICL NR in Feb. No banker will touch the AAA financing until ICL has vetted the CAPEX. We know that ICL might be playing games to get AAA for almost nothing but AAA picked them as partners so they have live with them and play along... I would expect FA to try to do some damage control on Sept 18th saying all is good, bla bla bla. IMO, it won't do much for the SP, he has no more credibility and is now considered irrelevant - ICL controls the game. As I have stated before, I believe that ICL wants the SP as low as possible to acquire the rest of the share for as little as possible in the 1H 2015. GLTA
Extract - Stefan Borgas - CEO ICL
'With respect to our growth projects in the agricultural business, as we have announced,we are in a very concentrated way exploring new mineral resources in
Southeast Asia and Africa and in Latin America. A couple of words for update
After we bought 16% in Allana Potash, a Canadian company but with the project
in Ethiopia, our technical teams have started to engage very deeply with the
Allana team and what we already saw in the pre-acquisition phase
is that the CAPEX projections that Allana has for this project are rather optimistic. We feel it’s probably a very attractive project. We need a few more months in order to define some of the more really, really technical details that will determine the final feasibility of this project. So we’re positive about it, but the project is not attractive in the way the junior mining company has designed it, at least that’s what we see from today’s perspective.'
Question from Joel Jackson of BMO Capital Market:
'That was very helpful, Stefan.
I just had one more question on Allana in Ethiopia.
You mentioned that Allana’s prior CAPEX estimates were quite optimistic. Maybe you could just give it a little more elaboration here. So what specifically what is optimistic? Was it the mine plan? Was it the prices and the equipment? Do you need to do another feasibility study here?
And where are you six months after this with the timing and the technical
Challenges and opportunities on this project?
Thanks.'
Stefan Borgas:
'So, this is a junior mining company who did a very good job when doing a pilot and
doing some basic design. Now, in order to build a mine, you need to go into more
of a detailed design so that you can narrow the CAPEX range.
We knew this when we bought this option.
What we’ve found now is that our original assumptions require more investigations, so we're not nervous.
The project the way Allana proposes it is not possible at this level of
CAPEX, from our perspective.
What we have done now with our technical team, with contractors, and with
-in collaboration with the Allana guys, is trying to narrow down the
Capex estimate range to a level where we can feel comfortable to approve
this, at least as investors. If Allana
decides to go without us at their current level then I think we will take a step back,. If
they can deliver it, okay, we have the offtake agreement, then this is also okay, but then we would not engage-get engaged full scale.
I believe our guys who are, you know —operation experts, and who know how to deal with Sylvinite and Carnallitite alike, really know what they're talking about so
I have high trust in our team.'
